CHILD IN CRISIS HAS NO VOICE

What you are looking at--two busted windows out of a VW Beetle and a 40-caliber bullet hole in a diswasher--were not the work of some vandal, vagrant or home invader. No, they were perpetrated by a 10-year-old, traumatized little boy with ADHD and Autism. He is the product of a broken home and a failed system.

In the last five months, the child has visited the ER four times! Each time, he was sent home for his single mother to deal with. ONE time, the State was involved and he was going to be placed in a temporary, residential facility. They wouldn't take him.

His family is at their wits' end. None of his caretakers are equipped to really help him. From the state legal system to the education system to the child advocacy and welfare system, there has been abject failure and neglect.

Today, he sits in a two-week residential facility out-of-state only because of his decision to fire a deadly weapon inside the home (with two other minor children and three adults, one an expectant mother). That situation could have turned out much worse. As it was, an early a.m. gunshot only damaged a replaceable kitchen appliance. The sound of that gunshot is what got the state's attention, finally.

The mother and other caregivers of this child have been screaming at the top of their lungs for the state child welfare system to take him in for psychiatric treatment and rehabilitation. No one wanted to do their job.

His older brother, a teen, is in a residential facility in Muncie, IN. He only got the help he needed after he perpetrated an assault on his brother. A CHINS case was opened by the State of Indiana (Child in need of services). Why should it have to come to this? Who's life has to be permanently altered for the system to work...for a 10-year-old with pre-existing conditions who is now traumatized and in crisis???

Who is going to advocate for him once his family's resources and energy are totally depleted? Who will be his voice?

TRYING, DOING and BEING

 

TRYING

There is no shame in trying. Trying is not failing.

I have no regrets that I tried and failed. That’s the learning process that produces growth and change. I am not a failure because the experiment didn’t work. It would have been a failure not to have even tried. I did a thing. It didn’t work out.

Life rolls on.

DOING

One thing I know about love. It's an active verb, not an abstract concept. It's not the stuff of fairy tales, but the real-life, everyday doing. You can say that you love someone all day long, SHOW THEM! Love takes action. It is a choice. It's not some marshmallow fluff of a feeling. Words are just that. Actions are concrete proof of what's inside. As the Scriptures say, "The tree bears fruit," it doesn't just announce to the world, "I produce the best apples!" The proof is in the doing.

And if your level of doing keeps producing the wrong result...

DO. SOMETHING. DIFFERENT.

BEING

Regardless, we are beings, not doings. I think I heard either Eckhart Tolle or Mooji say that to me the first time. In essence, we just are. And that is enough. We can just exist and be happy. We don't have to achieve to earn--respect, happiness, worth, acceptance, love, etc. We are good enough. Every human being deserves those things outright. Just be.

I am learning.

Still on a spiritual quest for understanding, awareness, consciousness...I do not have a complete grasp of this thing called life. And that's ok. I'm an imperfect being. I will continue to try, to do and to be...

ON MY OWN.